[Closed] Thinking about getting an original Mini for fun

very easy to work on, you need to get the best one you can afford (body is the key - if its a rotter (most are to some degree) it will cost ya. parts are dirt cheap but lots are terribly made.

cooper register forum

other mini forums are a little chavy and full of crap.

seriously its all about body work & chassis

I sold this for over 6k a year ago (bought for 5k spent about 2k on it)
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As long as you have the legs for it, go for it
Don't forget to post before and after pics

[url= http://www.greatescapecars.co.uk/cars-minicooper.asp ]hire[/url] one and get it out of your system... 🙂

Always easy to work on although the engine bay is cramped. Very little needed in the way of specialist tools and parts are cheap.

Rust is the killer, pretty much everywhere on the bodyshell! Don't believe that because it has been 'restored' it won't still be rusty, A panels (between wing and door) can go in a year of not treated properly.

I've had a pickup, a basic saloon and a cooper in the past, all great fun - what are you thinking of getting?

Basic saloon I guess but a Cooper would be great! 🙂

performance wise they are much more expensive than other small cars, you need to do a hell of a lot to a mini to make it as fast as something like a saxo VTR but for most people that isn't the point. So long as you want it for fun and won't need to rely on it everyday then there is nothing else like it. 🙂

Anything I should be aware of?

Death.

Look underneath and check the subframes - rotten subframes were what killed my lovely old Mini. Silly fun to drive, though - like a go-kart, braking for corners is optional 😉

where do you live? id be happy to show you around mine and give you a few pointers. im in leicester. failing that if you live anywhere near stafford the first proper show of the year is at Bingley hall on the last sunday in january. go there and have a look around. wont take you long to get an idea of what is good and what is not.
they are easy to work on if you don't mind taking a bit of skin off your knuckles. look for a good solid car that you can improve on. great engine and full of rust is not worth the hassle, unless you really want to shell out loads of cash or learn how to do bodywork repairs. the thing with minis is that half the enjoyment is working on them (for most people i know with them anyway) if you want a car you can buy and drive and do nothing to it then buy something else.

nice gt sefton.

i'd like a van

Have owned about 20 of the things over the years, the best was a 1340 clubman that started life as a 1275gt.

All the above is true, one word of warning you can push the limits of cornering to levels of ludicrousness but when they go they really go and there is zero protection in them.

I used to buy them for £50 and the like to get subframes etc off them, now even dogs make really good money.

OP: are you single (yet)?

I have my old one still in the garage, 1 day it will be restored back to former glory. Built it and then did 80k in 5years over my student/first working years.

you have 2 ways to go, find a good one or buy a bad one nd re-shell it.

Depends on skill level and time.

As has been said above, the body is the Achilles heel. It might cost £3k to repair a body. All the parts to rebuild an engine might be £300. Engine bay is small, but everything in it is easy to get to, nothing is at all complex.

If you are near Edinburgh, go and see Simon at The Mini Works. http://www.theminiworks.co.uk/

I restored my pick up with a 1400cc engine, S discs and lowered suspension. It was possible to four wheel drift it. 😯

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Simon has an unrestred MK2 Copper S for sale just now.

sefton - I like the look of the 1275GT - where/how did you sell it?
If I could find one like that !!!

performance wise they are much more expensive than other small cars, you need to do a hell of a lot to a mini to make it as fast as something like a saxo VTR but for most people that isn't the point.

Indeed, there's a lot more to "performance" in a car than power / top speed. Something the Americans may one day realise....

sold it on classic car trader site cant remember name now (took a while though)

it was re-shelled in the early 90's with a nos shell (zero rot - it was very solid car)

I'm not mechanically minded but did quite a few jobs on it. get a good book and some decent tool (plus big hammer) its nuts & bolts stuff really.

dont fall for all the 'trim' get a 1ltr city if the body & sub frame is good. trim/wheels etc are cheap - restoring body work is expensive or looks shit if ya do it yourself.

look here http://www.carandclassic.co.uk/list/82/1000/

oh sefton that looks great, i had an N plate back in the day, wish i still had it, there was more weld in it than sheet metal mind.
always wanted a pickup but i doubt i'd fit in one now with my dodgy back and larger front!
if i didn't have a glass back and i had plenty of time and money i'd buy one without hesitation. love em.

I had an immaculate A-reg Mayfair (998cc). Really, it was the body that was immaculate; the rest I had to work on, but what a pleasure!

Because I had no intention of allowing anyone in the back seat, I had half a mind to replace it with a cage to make the whole car safer but never got around to it. In any case, I sold it to a guy who treated even better than I did.

A real delight.

biggest cornering issue with the mini was a fondness to want to swap ends on a trailing throttle into fast sweeping bends I'm sure there's a technical term for it. Did mean you had to be brave an keep your foot planted :D.

Sefton, that GT is a beauty, stunning little car! 😀

Sefton, I'm sure i remember admiring that at a show a few years back. Really miss our old mini's, would love to get one again if i had the money.

I was looking again at a project mini, and was shocked to see ones that would need a lot of work going for £1500 on the forums and ebay. My bro in law has just got his clubby restored, with one of my old 998 race engines, i get the feeling after having a go in it I'll be buying another!

Loved mine back in the day, but rust took it in the end and it was only a base model so didn't try silly hard to save it. Did do a few basic trick which added poke for not much cash: fancy air filter, heated inlet manifold and LCB exhaust. Still have my old set of 10" Dunlop wide steel wheels sitting in the corner of a garage if anyone can find a use for them that's better than shelf supports.

Edit, got minifin brake drums lurking in the cellar too

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lovely cars when they work 🙂 had the bonnet fly up on at 85 on the m25 near the m4, lucky they're tapered. Had to drive 300 miles from the lake district with a blown silencer damn that was loud (wish i knew the coke can trick 🙁 back then). The mechanical voltage regulator failed and had to overnight in doncaster (finding someone who could fix it when it was last made in 1963 was tricky). Rebuilt the engine 3 times as it eats piston rings, my poor old knuckles.

OP thinking about the biggest engine mechanical you will likely come across is a slipping clutch due a primary gear oil seal failure, very common failure and you have to hoick the engine out to fix it though its an easy job some of the engine mounting bolts are trick to get at.

Had a '68 Cooper which gave way to an Allegro when son was born 🙄 Both good cars.
Used to maintain mates 1293 S which started of life in the lanes of the Malvern area as a road rally car. Engine had been tweaked by Tony Blower racing with a Webber '40, straight cut gearbox and drop gears. Very noisey ❗ 😆

You need to know where to look to find the bad bits on any "classic" car. So much can be hidden behind trim, carpets and other panels. eg on the Mini you need to remove the rear side pocket trim to check for rusty sub frame mount panel

tbh Beware how 'fragile' they are, and this is from a motorcyclist.

I came across an accident that had just occurred, a Mini had pulled out in front of a new 5 series. The 5 series had a broken front bumper, and the Mini was totally destroyed - with a poor young girl still stuck inside...

my brother has owned around 5 or 6 and restored 3 of them

I had a clubman for a while, it was such a laugh

Like klunk I had the bonnet fly up on the motorway, 4 of us in it, and me doing about 80 with my head out of the window trying to get us over to the hard shoulder

Also remember going to Lincolnshire to a mini show in my brothers with the exhaust blowing at the front. We all had headaches for most of the day

And I remember the alternator dying on another friends mini while we were coming back to Glossop from Barnsley, at night, with no lights

They are cracking fun, and you forget about any problems as soon as you get behind the wheel

My brother let me borrow his 1380cc to go to work in for a few days, I always took the long way home, and always had a smile on my face

That's a lovely motor there klunk. My first car was a an old blue H reg' 998 back in 1981. Followed by a red mini van, a beige pick-up, a white rally prepared cooper and a couple of later mini 1000s. Just about every type except a clubman.

Just look at a few first to see what's what
Rot just about everywhere
Loved my 1380 but if driven hard did require a lot of tinkering with
Mostly killed the head gasket and with a webber it would drink fuel at a crazy rate
But I'd have another any day if I had some covered storage

Check out z cars for mad bike engined minis

They look like a lot of fun but (having been there) they are a really, really awful place to be in a crash. Just don't think that you are protected like you are in a modern car!

Rachel

My sister has one (it's currently rotting on my parents drive but she won't part with it). It was her first car, suspension was gone so it was runing on its bump stops, it also turned out to have an engine modded and upgraded for auto trials - hole in the inner wing for quick clutch changes and was properly rapid for a 1 litre - 100mph plus out of a 4 speed gearbox, my dad was well shocked when my sister dropped his V6 onto the A3...'mini's aren't supposed to go like that' were his exact words!

Bump stop suspension meant it was proper go-kart like in corners and she did tend to drive it like it was nicked, the fiat she had afterwards was properly scary on roundabouts, as she drove it like the mini, body roll tastic!

biggest cornering issue with the mini was a fondness to want to swap ends on a trailing throttle into fast sweeping bends I'm sure there's a technical term for it. Did mean you had to be brave an keep your foot planted :D.

I once snapped off the exhaust on mine just after the manifold, going through a ford a bit too fast - 20 miles home sounding like a drag car !

biggest cornering issue with the mini was a fondness to want to swap ends on a trailing throttle into fast sweeping bends

[url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift-off_oversteer ]This?[/url]

I had two mini's, an old 850 and then a 998cc city that became a 1380cc death trap.

They RUST, badly, shell and rear sub-frames. Radius arm bearings, swivel hub ball joints and wheel bearings were the main mechanical's I experienced.

Stuck to the road like glue but when they did break free it was normally a trip into the bank or bushes (3 spring to mind).

Water pumps and rear brake slave cylinders were also prone to failure. Parts were usually cheap but remember a mates 1100 had an unusual set of slave cylinders as standard and they were 3 times the cost of the ones on my 998.

Great fun to drive but maintenance intensive if driven hard.

Get one with disks, drums all round are a bit scary.

Oh yeah, my sister's one had drum brakes, its was 'ok' once they were cut to improve the brakes. She still wrote it off...twice...once with me as the passenger. Fortunately daddy is a mechanic, It had a whole new front end after she parked it in someone elses boot. (she also parked it in next doors garden wall for good measure)

Someone mentioned Z Cars?

By simply adding an engine to one of our kits and installing it all into a classic Mini you can build yourself one of the fastest most fun cars around. Check out a build diary here

Kits are made to allow Honda 2Ltr Vtec, Volvo T4 turbo engines or even Suzuki Hayabusa and Yamaha R1 motorcycle engines to be fitted. With over 450 kits sold world wide this conversion remains one of the best kit car options around.

They do rot badly where the car battery is

Be quick before the Americans smuggle them all out of the country! 😉

Do it

Driving one on the road feels so naughty compared to new cars, I was always amazed as to how much you could cram into one too.

As mentioned above look for a clean rust free shell, don't worry about which version too much, they all are good fun to drive.

Good examples go for very good money now

that's it sobriety, think it was more pronounce in the 1275 engined cars, they have quite a long stroke for their capacity, though it gave them loads of torque, it meant quite harsh engine braking which made them awful twitchy at high speed. I'm always amazed when driving familiar roads of where I used to overtake quite safely in the cooper which I wouldn't even think of attempting in more powerful cars. The mid range power delivery @40-70 was just so immediate.

Great cars, had six over the course of my late teens to mid-twenties.
Highlight was a bucket seated 1293 that we (cough) reshelled(cough) into a 1972 body. Another highlight was going downhill, the front end suddenly dropping and a front wheel undertaking me!
Have promised myself another one as my midlife crisis car in the next coupla years.
Wouldn't say I'm a mechanic but learned a lot about cars and engines from having them, a) cos they broke down a lot, and b) cos most of the time I couldn't afford to pay someone to fix them! Hence-
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